Pop Goes the Nominee

The Washington parlor game of taking umbrage with presidential appointments has been refined to an art form in recent days. Everyone from Rosa Brooks in these pages to Maureen Dowd in the New York Times has complained that the president’s team is too old, too white, too male, too much resembling a California Raisin.

Let’s be clear; Most of the Obama administration’s wounds are self-inflicted. Why it rushed to roll out white, male appointees ahead of all others is something of a mystery, and will make the appointment of highly qualified women and minorities look as if the White House is engaging in damage control. But having appointed more than 40 percent of women to political slots, the administration is not quite the boys’ club that Fox News and others are now bemoaning.